How ’bout a huge huzzah for Mark Kiesling of The Times. “The Kiester” was recently named as the Hoosier State’s top bloviator general columnist. Informed sources indicate that an award recipient receives a lifetime supply of Willie Wonka chocolate, a hearty handshake from the editor, and the certificate pictured below.
Who can remember - who can forget - the Fembots? They were the saucy, spike-heeled automatons with machine-gun jugglies deployed by Dr. Evil as he tried to thwart Austin Powers and achieve world domination. Well, it appears the local Dr. Evil wannabes who seek - er, who have achieved - total political domination in Lake County have their own automatons - tens of thousands of them, it seems - except that here they’re called voters. Or, shall we say, Dembots? Mark Kiesling’s column today (subtly entitled Straight Voting is a Ticket to Ignorance) points out, none too cheerfully, that nearly half of the locals vote solely (and blindly?) on the basis of party fealty, defined elsewhere as the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord.
As oft said, people get the government they deserve. Or as the bandito Calvera (from The Magnificent Seven) put it: “If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep.” Sounds like a banner for the Goverment Complex in Crown Point.
DATELINE: September 1, 2008, Live-blogging from Louisiana
9:47 AM: The gathering storm. Even for those of us who only write in cyberspace, you can’t make your journalistic bones until you’ve reported live from the eye of a hurricane. So hello from Louisiana, where I’m now with a small cohort of mainstream media comrades, staging out of a FEMA trailer left over from Hurricane Katrina and subsisting on arugula donated by Senator Obama along with moose stew from Governor Palin. The tension is ramping up by the minute, as the hurricane threatens to take it to another level. (Veteran reporters here advise that any hackneyed ESPN sports cliche will serve as a semantic port in a storm.)
1:12 PM: Thar she blows! It’s always good to consult the pros from Dover. I was having real trouble keeping my footing in the gale-force winds that have now arrived, but got some good advice from my newest best friend, Anderson Cooper of CNN. “Coop” suggested that I maintain a wide stance when she really blows. (No, not the wide stance of Sen. Larry Craig fame.)
3:44 PM: A hat tip to Shep. Got a much appreciated sartorial suggestion from good buddy Shepherd Smith of Fox News. “Ditch the plaid jacket and the beekeeper’s bonnet,” he said. “No one will take you seriously unless you’re wearing a windbreaker and/or a baseball cap with a curved bill.” “Shep” gave me one of his hand-me-downs, an official hurricane reporter’s hat (pictured below). Just in time for Hurricane Hanna.
Show me the money! That’s the essence of the legal claim pressed by Mayor George Pabey of East Chicago and Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter against Second Century, a for-profit development foundation in East Chicago that reaps about 2 million dollars a year from the city’s casino revenues. It’s all at bit murky at this point, but political insiders Tom Cappas, Mike Pannos and their families purportedly earn (or at least are paid) “enormous salaries” to run the show. And it remains murky because Second Century will not open its books for public inspection. That may change. Last month, the Indiana Supreme Court - the very same crew that overturned the fraudulent 2003 East Chicago mayoral election - agreed to review the claim.
The current over/under betting line at the local casinos for the salaries of the big shots? $75,000 a month.
The finger-pointing between county officials over budget cuts has begun. Every officeholder claims to be working with a skeleton crew, it’s always the personnel budget of someone else that is bloated, and the County Council must now search for the oft-rumored, always-denied “fat” in Lake County government.
But whodathunk the controversy would ever hit the toob. Spike TV, a cable network always on the prowl for off-beat programming, announced that filming will soon begin here in Lake County for a new reality-based television series, a talent contest with audience voting. The talent in question - the ability to draw a government paycheck without earning it. “What caught our eye was the sheer volume of sloth in Lake County government,” said one producer. “Every organization has worker bees, drones and queens, but if you’re looking for the top drone, the talent pool here is really deep.” The network also issued participant guidelines for the show, which is tentatively entitled American Idle.
1. Contestant eligibility for American Idle is limited to county goverment employees, despite the expected howls of protest from NIPSCO and postal workers.
2. Sitting on your brains all day behind a desk is fine, but if you want to become a finalist, you’re gonna have to demonstrate a talent for stealth sloth - faux activity that doesn’t actually accomplish anything.
3. Classic, time-honored goldbricking stratagems are highly recommended. For example, report to work on time but then immediately proceed to the cafeteria for coffee and donuts. Kill time there until your mid-morning break.
4. Bonus points will be awarded for racking up expenses on the public tab while giving nothing to the citizens in return, such as running up the mileage on a taxpayer-funded vehicle and burning up county-paid gas for trips to the mall or the casinos.
5. A breezy indifference to public opinion and media criticism is a must.
Readers are invited to click below and submit comments with nominations of their own.
In a boiler room operation deep in the bowels of Hammond City Hall, a bevy of loyal employees, seated shoulder-to-shoulder, beaver away in obscurity for the greater glory of Hammond. Their mission - to scour the online readers’ message board at The Times and then dump, wipe and flush any posts deemed subversive to, or critical of the city administration.
But obscure they are no more, as a hunger for headlines trumps the public interest for those nattering nabobs of negativity at The Times. who once again rake muck over McMayor. Holding the big rake this time (and size does matter) is columnist Mark Kiesling, also known with varying degrees of affection as “The Keister,” whose Sunday column blew the cover off this heretofore covert operation, one deemed vital to the political security of His Honor, and hence the good of the people.
City loyalists are encouraged to keep a weather eye on The Keister and his columns.
(Grid searches conducted after the 5/8/08 Amber Alert failed to locate the Unknown Correspondent, but searchers stumbled across the following message-in-a-bottle found floating in the Little Calumet River. It is posted here per the U.C.’s instructions.)
Well, they finally got me! Swept off the street by Democratic Centurions on the Ides of March, I find myself now incarcerated (as an enemy of the Party) in a gulag located somewhere in the remote tribal borderlands between Lake Station, New Chicago, and Hobart - the fabled Golden Crescent. Interrogation of detainees here is constant, with interruptions only for torture sessions that alternate between the severe (waterboarding - with water from Wolf Lake, no less) and the annoying (sleep deprivation - with golden slumbers broken by the sound of a woman’s strange laughter over camp loudspeakers). I’ve not cracked yet, but now Boss Rudy tells me if I don’t get my mind right, they’re gonna send me out bird-hunting with VP Cheney.
Detainee morale reached an all-time low here at Club 45 (as it’s affectionately known among us) with Wednesday’s announcement that almost every single officeholder here in Incumbentstan had been re-elected. Faint hopes of eventual political freedom were re-kindled, however, by rumors quietly passed around camp that Area 45 got some unpleasant face-time on national television this week over Tuesday’s delayed vote count. Network anchors and cable talking heads were said to be stunned to encounter the living fossil that is Da Region’s political structure with its troglodytic leaders, and Wolf Blitzer from CNN, so we’re told, looked like he’d just reeled in a coelacanth.
I’ve collected a stash of empty Mr. Pibb bottles in which to smuggle out these occasional notes from the underground, and I’ll rely on the kindness of strangers to get them to the Web.
The Unknown (at least for now) Correspondent
Click on image below.
Flash back if you can to junior high school. Remember those crazy-quilt maps of medieval Europe with the Kingdom of This, the Duchy of That, and the Principality of Toomanyconsonants, all in perpetual geopolitical conflict. Couldn’t help but think of that today when reading of the downstate public squabbling among the leaders of Lake County’s Five Families major cities over South Shore expansion. Whether you agree with proposed expansion or not, the Region’s feudal structure and its parochial politics [or its “Balkanization,” per The Times] continue to embarrass.
Does Don Barden have the City of Gary by the short hairs? Barden’s lawsuit alleges the City reneged on its casino development agreement with the Majestic Star, and it suggests that Gary’s casino revenues will be/should be escrowed. The lawsuit was filed in Marion County, so there’ll be no home cooking here for Gary with this case. The prospect that Barden may turn off the financial faucet might explain the recent rumor (a well-placed rumor, but a rumor nonetheless) that some sort of municipal bankruptcy looms on Gary’s horizon.
Addendum (02.19.08): So Barden has turned off the faucet. Clay’s reported comments bode ill for the City, and bode well for the rumor noted above.
I will get by, I will survive. Keep your eyes peeled for Bear Grylls of Man vs. Wild fame. For those unfamiliar with that show, Bear (a former SAS soldier) routinely strands himself in remote and savage lands, armed only with rudimentary tools and well-honed survival skills. (If you just gotta know the nutritional and culinary value of maggots, check out the episode entitled European Alps, or simply watch this YouTube video.) Bear has survived the Alaskan wilderness, the Sahara Desert, and the Panamanian jungle, but now he faces his toughest challenge yet. Filming begins later this month when Bear parachutes into Area 45 at an undisclosed location near the Gary Airport, where he’ll begin the arduous survival trek to Newton County and civilization. How will he navigate in a region where the sun never seems to shine? Where will Bear find clean water? What’s the nutritional value of a feral cat? Can Bear avoid ending up on the sharp end of a post-mortem Y incision at the Lake County Morgue? How will he escape those infamous toxic traps known as the Grand Calumet River and the Feddeler Landfill, Lake County’s answer to the La Brea Tar Pits? Stay tuned to the Discovery Channel for answers to these questions and more.
Money can’t buy everything, it’s true. But what it can’t buy, I can’t use. Reverend Steve “Big Money” Munsey is the so-called “prosperity preacher” at the Family Christian Center, the Munster megachurch with an in-house Starbuck’s cafe. (”I’ll have an Amazing Grace Latte with a side order of Everlasting Redemption.”) Munsey got a recent taste of some journalistic fire and brimstone in The Times and on national television. Under media prodding, Munsey and his peeps defended his upscale home in a gated community and justified his travel on a private airplane (”a small plane that holds eight people, not a multimillion-dollar jet”) as just the sort of thing Jesus would do, were he still here on Earth. (Yeah, I recall Jesus’ promise at the end of the Bible - “Surely, I come quickly” - but I kinda doubt that was a reference to the speed of air travel.) Anyway, Region politicians were quick to spot a kindred spirit, and rumor has it that a double, double secret meeting was held last week between Munsey and county officeholders. Munsey’s rousing presentation to the assembled - entitled “Fleecing the Flock” - offered valuable (albeit unnecessary) tips on the path to a lavish lifestyle while sticking churchgoers or taxpayers with the tab. After the reciprocal passing of collection plates, the glitterati in attendance scattered to sundry break-out sessions. Briar Ridge vs. Doubletree: Which Gated Community is Best for You?
P.S. A cyber shout-out to some Region blogging homies - Christopher Hedges, Steve Dalton, Maurice Eisenstein, and anyone I missed - for posting links to this website and for some kind words. Just got my copy of WordPress For Dummies, and when I finish reading the book (it takes awhile when gotta move your lips as you read), I’ll know better how to return the favor.
